Kansas City will keep bus rides free for next year. Future of fares, service still murky

Mike Hendricks
·3 min read

Free bus and paratransit rides will continue in Kansas City for another year at least under terms of the new annual contract with the regional transportation authority that the City Council approved on Thursday.

What form the city’s zero fare program on the RideKC system takes after that remains uncertain, however.

According to the contract, city officials and the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority will discuss whether it makes sense to continue the zero fare pretty much as is, or reimpose fares for some riders and keep it free for others for financial and operational reasons.

Free riders might also need to carry a personalized bus pass that could be withdrawn, if they cause trouble for other riders or bus drivers, an arrangement labeled “functional zero fare free,” but that term has not been defined. Whatever they come up with would be brought back to the council for consideration and would not go into affect until the end of the contract, which is set to expire on April 30, 2025.

None of this affects the streetcar system, which has always been fare free and is not under KCATA management.

Members of Sunrise Movement KC opposed the elimination of RideKC’s zero-fare program for the KCATA bus transit system as members showed up to protest and make their voices heard at the Board of Commissioners meeting Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023, at the Breen Administration Building in Kansas City. The Board is considering re-implementing bus fares, which have been free for about the past four years.

The council eliminated fares on RideKC busses operating within the city limits in early 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suburbs that also contract with KCATA did the same.

But Kansas City has never fully compensated the transit agency for its share of the lost fare revenue. Regular fare was $1.50 a ride, or $3 a day, with some express routes having higher fares. And by eliminating the fares on fixed-route busses, the KCATA was forced by federal rules to do the same for on-call paratransit rides.

The KCATA covered the funding gap with federal pandemic aid funds, but those dollars run out this year.

Fare revenue alone won’t come anywhere close to making up the difference, but it would help as the transportation authority looks for more sources of funding, as Kansas City is the only local jurisdiction with a dedicated transit tax.

Frank White III, the authority’s CEO, said the KCATA also believes that a fare system might help combat disorder on the busses caused by people who ride the bus all day to stay out of the weather or if they have no place to go.

Some people get on the bus and ride all day and become abusive when drivers order them off at the end of the line, for instance.

The agency has a 29-member security staff – which includes four Kansas City police officers assigned full time – and it’s still not enough, KCATA Chief Operations Officer Chuck Ferguson told the council’s transportation committee on Wednesday.

“I’m not going to sit here and say that zero fare is the problem for security issues,” Ferguson said. “But what we do know, just data shows us that prior to zero fare we didn’t have anywhere near the number of security issues that we have today.”

Councilman Eric Bunch, an avid public transportation advocate who voted for the zero fare policy at the end of 2019, said that other big-city bus systems have similar security issues, and yet they charge fares.

“I just want to be careful to not scapegoat zero fare for the safety and security issues,” he said and suggested that more study is needed to see whether there are any facts to support the notion that reimposing fares would make the busses safer.